High prison populations result of policy, not crime: study

Prison populations and overcrowding in member states is linked to sentence length and not to the number of people incarcerated.

A study published Friday (3 May) by the Strasbourg-based human rights watchdog Council of Europe says the most overcrowded prisons in the Union are found in southern and eastern member states even though fewer people are sentenced when compared to Nordic countries.

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One of the co-authors of the study, Dr. Marcelo F. Aebi at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, told this website that prison populations will continue to grow - even if overall crime rate is on the decline - if inmates have long prison terms.

More people on average are incarcerated in the Nordic countries than in Italy or Spain but serve much shorter sentences.

But whereas Spain sentenced 38.2 percent of the inmates in September 2011 to sentences ranging from three to five years, Sweden handed out one to three year sentences in 33 percent of its final convictions.

Greece handed out 20 year sentences and over in 37.7 percent of the cases.

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